the Indians who now resided beneath the protection of the Spanish power.  When the Jesuit missionaries arrived in Northern Uruguay and in Southern Paraguay their advent had the effect of embittering the feud between the frontiersmen; for the Jesuits, forming the Indians into companies of their own, withdrew them still farther from the onslaughts of the Paolistas.  These latter determined at all costs to capture and to drive back their gangs of slaves, became more and more emboldened, and pushed forward to the south and west well into the Spanish territories, harrying the missionary settlements, and laying waste the countryside.

For years the Guarani Indians, unarmed, were helpless in the face of such attacks.  Eventually, however, the influence of the Jesuits obtained permission from the Court of Spain for these latter to be provided with firearms, and after this the Indian regiments, trained and disciplined, offered such effective resistance to the Mamelucos that these were forced to cease their slave-raids.

In 1574, when the importation into Brazil of negro slaves from West Africa had become a regular affair, the demand for slaves on the part of the Paolistas naturally became less active.  Even with this item of discord removed, such intervals of peace as were patched up between the rival Powers were of short duration.  The fertile and temperate lands to the north of the River Plate still remained in dispute, and although the Spaniards succeeded in retaining the possession of the bulk of these, there were times when the Portuguese penetrated as far as the waters of the great river, and in the end they managed to detach several of the most northerly districts from Spanish control, and in adding these to their own colonies.

It was consistent with the curious irony of fate which seemed to direct the operations of the Continent at that period, that while the Portuguese and Spaniards, actual lords of the soil, were at daggers drawn, the foreign seawolves, who had been gathering together, surveying with longing eyes the fold of riches so rigorously banned from them, were now making preparations for active aggression.  But the history of the expeditions on the part of these formidable rovers is worthy of more than one chapter to itself.

CHAPTER IX

FOREIGN RAIDS ON THE SPANISH COLONIES

Had the laws of the Indies been differently framed, there is no doubt that the hardy sailors and reckless buccaneers who plundered these coasts would have had no existence, and that South America would have remained unprovided with much of its grim romance.  As it was, Spain, by her imperious policy of “hands off,” had flung a challenge to every adventurer of the other nations throughout Europe.